All Square Carpet, Upholstery and Hard Floor Cleaning in Warwick, Leamington and Kenilworth

Call 01926 492696 or 07557 944461

Same type of carpet, different cleaning processes

17th November 2016

Here at All Square Cleaning I have recently had the pleasure of cleaning carpet in a primary school, a church hall and some offices. I was reflecting on each job and realised that although they had the same type of carpet, low profile polypropylene, they were very different tasks.

The church hall has heavy usage and is used for a variety of purposes. Mostly these seem to involve cakes and coffee if the evidence on the floor is to be believed. Because of the needs of the different groups the furniture is a type that is easy to stack and move around. As a single operator I was able to clean 150m2 in a few hours without any particular difficulty.

The primary school also has heavy usage. The classrooms were pleasingly free of food and coffee though the staff room was another matter. What they did have were lots of blu-tac, glitter, sand, mud and urine. Yes, urine. I was told this when I went to survey as the younger children are prone to the occasional accident. As the furniture is less suitable for moving around I brought in a helper for the day. It was a long day for two of us to do 250m2.

The office has areas of heavy soiling, some tea and coffee spills and little furniture. One person, 200m2 without too much difficulty although the work was conducted on a Saturday to avoid disruption.

So the process to clean was broadly the same, but with important differences.

1. Vacuum – this removes as much dry soiling as possible.

2.Apply a pre-spray. One spray is formulated to deal with tea and coffee spills. Another spray is less effective on tannin but rather good at de-odourising and sanitising all the dried urine that we are going to add water to.

3.Agitate the carpet pile using a choice of powered brushing systems – the choice being dependent on access into nooks and crannies or faster coverage of open areas.

4.Allow the pre-spray enough time to work.

5.Breaking down the soiling now reveals the blu-tac as it stands out bright blue now that its coating of grime has been removed. We can now treat these individually with an acidic gel and a craft knife.

6.A pressured rinse of steaming hot water incorporated with a vacuum recovery system will remove the pre-spray and all the dirt.

7.It is now beneficial to force dry the carpet. In most areas powerful fans direct a stream of air over the carpet. In a classroom this won’t work. All those pictures will come off the walls and deposit more glitter on the floor so an absorbent cotton pad is used to pick up any remaining moisture.

8.Replace furniture so the room is ready for the customer.

To summarise, the processes are the same but the choice of chemical is different and the equipment used will differ in parts of the process. Knowing which to use and when is the difference between a cheap job done by somebody who doesn’t know any better or paying a bit more for a trained, qualified, specialist carpet cleaning company.

I am proficient in a range of carpet cleaning processes so I can always meet your requirements. You can find me at www.allsquarecleaning.co.uk or give me, Neil Worsnop, a call on 01926 492696.